The 2nd high school student sports tournament in Dien Bien province in 2025, organized by the Department of Education and Training in coordination with the Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism from March 27-30, attracted more than 1,650 students from 43 delegations.
The tournament has 8 events with 68 events, in which pickleball appeared for the first time and quickly became the focus.
The pickleball subject is organized with 9 competition events, divided equally among 3 levels of education: Primary, Secondary and High School, including mixed doubles, women's doubles and mixed doubles. The matches were exciting with technical moves, attracting the attention of the audience.
Le Phuong Thuy, an 11th grade student at Dien Bien Province Boarding School for Ethnic Minorities, said: "This is a new sport, it's my first time participating, so I felt excited and worried, but when competing, I forgot everything and just wanted to 'sure' myself with my teammates".
Thuy added that since the second semester of this school year, the school has included pickleball in the curriculum, and the extra morning and afternoon training sessions have helped her become much more confident when entering the tournament.
After 4 months of training, Pham Vu Quynh Nga (grade 9 student at Thanh Hung Secondary School, Dien Bien district) clearly felt her progress and loved this sport even more.
I enjoyed learning pickleball, it felt a little intense. When I won a beautiful ball, I was very happy because I was so happy, just like that, I just gave my all. A lot of friends at school also attended because they were following the trend" - Nga said.
According to teacher Bui Tien Dung - Xuan Lao Secondary School, Muong Ang District, bringing pickleball into the tournament not only creates opportunities for exchange and learning but also increases the number of athletes participating, making the tournament more exciting.
However, he also admitted that the difficulties in schools in the commune, such as lack of facilities, training grounds are often just concrete courts, and competition equipment is limited.
This school year, this sport has not been included in the teaching of Xuan Lao Secondary School, so students mainly study it through extracurricular sessions. However, this will be the first step for pickleball to develop strongly in Dien Bien in the future" - Mr. Dung emphasized.
Pickleball is a new sport, with many similarities to table tennis, badminton and tennis). Pickleball has 2 types of play, including: singles (2 people) and doubles (4 people). One person will use a racket to serve and pass a Pickleball ball over a 0.86m high net to make the opponent commit a foul or cannot hold the ball.
